Hellcat Ace described as humble about feats

Hamilton McWhorter III was the first aviator to become a World War II Hellcat Ace pilot and was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.

He was a large man, whose frame filled up an airplane's cockpit as easily as his personality filled up a room.

But, for all of his aviation prowess and his imposing stature, McWhorter was a kind-hearted, tender man.

"Hamilton was a rugged man - with that military bearing, too, of course - but he was always so affectionate, with a darling twinkle in his eyes, and always ready to be amused and laugh," said Sarah Erwin Leathers, his first cousin.

While McWhorter's sweet personality did not fit the stereotype of the cocky fighter pilot, his life certainly personified the mold of men known as "The Greatest Generation."

McWhorter, who was born in Athens on Feb. 8, 1921, died April 12 of natural causes in El Cajon, Calif. His ashes were interred May 5 at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, near San Diego.

McWhorter already had a private pilot's license when he enlisted in the Navy, his wife said. His squadron was the first to fly a new plane, the Grumman F6F Hellcat.

Before the end of the war, he had shot down 12 enemy planes in his Hellcat, becoming the first pilot in World War II to be designated as a Hellcat Ace.

Many years later, McWhorter wrote a book detailing his experiences fighting in the Pacific. And, in 1989, he was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.

Before he ever piloted his first plane, McWhorter already had survived the devastating effects of both the Great Depression and a Florida hurricane.

McWhorter's nephew, Jim McWhorter Jr., told a story he had heard many times from his father, Jim McWhorter Sr., who was Hamilton's brother.

Hamilton and Jim Sr. had moved to Florida with their family when their father was looking for work during the lean Depression years. Their father finally found a job working a dragline excavator on Lake Okeechobee.

When a hurricane struck in 1926, the McWhorters, who lived near the lake, were rescued by boat with only the clothes on their backs and a few belongings.

"My dad was 2 and Hamilton was 4, but they both remembered being on the last train to make it out of the area," Jim Jr. said. "They both recalled the surge water lapping at the railroad tracks as they pulled away."

Later, the family took up residence in the old Cloverhurst mansion in Athens. The mansion, which had once been the splendid residence of Hamilton McWhorter's grandfather, Judge Hamilton McWhorter, was pretty run-down by the time the future flying ace lived there.

His sister-in-law, Ann, remembers hearing how McWhorter often would ride his bicycle from Cloverhurst to the Athens airport. From watching the planes take off and land, she said, McWhorter developed a lifelong infatuation with flying.

He also developed a lifelong infatuation with the woman who would become his wife, Louise. Louise recalls how, after dating for awhile, her future husband took her to task for accepting a New Year's Eve date with an old friend of hers.

"He said, 'I guess if I want you all to myself, I better marry you,' " Louise recounted.

At the time, they were riding in an automobile through evening darkness, she remembered. When Hamilton mentioned marriage, Louise said the car seemed to light up, and a voice from the back seat boomed, "Yes."

"I will always believe that was the voice of God telling me to say yes to marriage, because we were married for 65 years and never had a cross word," she said.

They raised five children together, and their son William remembered his father as a man who led by respect, not by discipline.

"Other fathers would yell and scream, but not my father," he said.

William said his father also never boasted about his war experience.

"My father was a hero, but he never brought it up, and never bragged about what he did," he said.

McWhorter retired from the Navy in 1969, with the rank of commander. When he retired, he was the executive officer of Miramar Naval Air Station in California.